University of Michigan Fires Its President Over Inappropriate Relationship

Rebekah Modrak, a professor of art and design, sponsored a successful faculty no-confidence vote against Dr. Schlissel in September 2020, primarily because of concerns about pandemic policies. She said that she and other faculty members also believed the administration had not been sufficiently attuned to complaints about sexual assault and harassment on campus.

“For many of us and for me, the reaction was huge relief,” she said of the firing. “Because he has been such an arrogant leader and so dismissing of faculty concerns.”

Dr. Schlissel announced in October that he would resign in June 2023, a year earlier than originally planned but that he would continue working as a special adviser and president emeritus. That contract has been terminated.

Does DL think that the subordinate should also be named and/or fired or do we subscribe to the idea that because she was his subordinate, he exercised a fundamental power imbalance, so she is not to be blamed for her actions since such a power imbalance fundamentally makes it not her fault.

I think I know which way DL will go, but am curious.

[quote]The emails used “inappropriate tone and inappropriate language,”

I thought tone policing was a bad thing.

These presidents are paid an obscene amount of money. They should act respectably.

David Daniels is probably having some schadenfreude right about now.

There's gotta be more to this. IMO, this guy & whoever he was having an affair with were probably both difficult to work with. He's not very attractive, so I'm guessing that his on-campus paramour was using the relationship to her advantage. People got sick of it.

Why would we care about this?? I don’t give a damn who is fucking who if it’s consensual.

The firing of a president at a top university is pretty big news, r7

Is that 900k PER YEAR? He is ridiculously overpaid.

They posted 118 pages of his emails to his paramour? Even if he/she isn’t named, people are going to know who they are. How embarrassing and unnecessary and vindictive. They may have trouble filling that post permanently. Even at almost seven figures.

That salary is obscene.

1.7 million to 6.2 million

One would think that a pres of any university would be smarter than to use emails to his paramour.

Those are obscene pay levels R12

Wake up Americans. The .1% are running a racket.

WTF does a college President even do to warrant anything even near those levels of pay??

Presidents are fundraisers. The outgoing Penn president made even more.

The language in the letter is so ridiculous, it makes it seem as if using the Michigan e-mail system was just as bad as the affair, like he’s guilty of telecommunications fraud.

The emails were completely banal, nothing obscene or sexually explicit. So they were fucking, if thats serious enough to merit immediate dismissal then fine, that’s partly what contributed to the Met museum director resigning a few years ago, but why does public shaming and airing of what should be confidential documents need to be a part of the punishment? The vindictive nature of this maneuver is beyond baffling. Getting ousted by a damn art professor, lord.

The base salary is often around a million and then the graft kicks in. Also huge golden parachutes. Many of the highest paid are at also ran schools. Johnson & Wales? RPI - OK respectable school but small and 2nd tier - paying over 5 million total compensation?

As a Michigan resident, this is interesting. Up in Marquette, our NMU president was fired immediately late last year, merely for the way he ran things. Those big salaries can make these men feel untouchable, but it can also put a price on their head...

Here's the "truth teller" art prof. She's a woker than woke white chick who has a hard on for diversity. Doesn't she look fun!

[quote]Does DL think that the subordinate should also be named and/or fired or do we subscribe to the idea that because she was his subordinate, he exercised a fundamental power imbalance, so she is not to be blamed for her actions since such a power imbalance fundamentally makes it not her fault.

I think I know which way DL will go, but am curious.

I don't think either of them should be fired. He's being fired for having an extramarital affair. Is this 1915? I couldn't care less if she's a subordinate, or if there's a power imbalance - doesn't mean he abused that imbalance. They're both adults. The world is becoming very rule bound, rigid, and intolerant.

"Wake up Americans. The .1% are running a racket."

But they don't like Trump.

Remember that is only base salary as those contracts typically have many other benefits like housing, car, generous additional retirement and insurance payments, yearly bonus and lots of paid first class travel for president and spouse.

It sounds like the faculty wanted him gone for many reasons. The provost was also ousted for sexual impropriety. Like someone else said, Michigan will have a hard time finding someone willing to take this job.

I'm trying to get Robby Benson to apply for this position.

Are they going to put him in the stocks in the town square and throw rotten vegetables at him ? Maybe brand his forehead with a scarlet A? Maybe the woman involved should have her head publicly shaved. Are we living in 1790 now?

I want to know how old his mistress is.

I don't think it was JUST that they had an affair. It was probably that he bestowed upon her many special favors. And that's going to be unpopular in ANY era, r26 -- just ask English kings James I and Edward II!

What posters are missing is that this email thing was only the last straw on the camel's back. Schlissel made himself loathed on campus over the course of various incidents, and the Board of Regents had been divided over what to do with him for a couple of years. They were probably grateful for a legitimate reason to get rid of him.

What I want to know is what emerged from the weird email kerfuffle from Ron Weiser, Board of Regents member and former chair of the MI Republican Party. I've found one DL thread about it but it didn't get much of a response, and I never heard anything further about it.

Haven't they heard of texting?

R30, In most public institutions with state public record laws, texting may be just as vulnerable to disclosure as email, voicemails and written communications. Only your unrecorded conversations and thoughts are private. So far.

yeah , R31, but the emails at issue seem to be from their .edu accounts. That’s not exactly a private way to communicate, at work, about person matters.

Academia is filled with those suffering from arrested development.

They must really want him out. This is humiliating to his wife, an innocent party. Did they really have to publish the emails? Which, by the way, were extremely tame.

The whole thing makes me feel sorry for him. His wife lives in another state. He seems very lonely. Not that I'm trying to excuse cheating, but the man is human after all. People have physical and emotional needs.

If the wife divorces him, I'll bet he ends up with the mistress.

This university seems to put out more than a tour of degenerates.

That was expensive Poontang.

He probably got fired for being so dumb he thought it was ok to use his University email account to send emails to his “boo”.

I'm glad to see Universities taking action about inappropriate sexual relations, though in this case it was probably an excuse to fire him. I went to school in the late 70s and early 80s before there were very few behavioral rules except for cheating on exams. I was stalked and assaulted by a female prof and there were no procedures in place outside of criminal charges. Stalking wasn't really talked about until Hinkley, then it was treated as a one off.

Maybe he just liked to watch...

R35 so having an extra- marital affair now makes a person a "degenerate" ? Thank you, Church Lady.

Is he accused of sexual harassment? Did the woman file a complaint? If so he deserved to be fired. If it was a consensual relationship between adults, why is the board trying to monitor it? It sounds like they were upset with him for other reasons and this is what they could get him on. I don’t like the policing of people’s private lives (again, assuming it was consensual which it appears to have been.)

who are the idiots here who think it's ok for a university president to sleep with a subordinate? you guys must be living in some other world

R42 If it's two adults who had a consensual relationship there's nothing wrong going on. Which makes me agree that this guy did something else to piss someone higher up than the scorned woman off. The rules and guidelines Gen Z/Millennials want over all adult relationships are crazy and regressive - these people pretend to be "progressive" but want someone fired for having sex like it's 1950....

How long before a black woman is named the new president?

He was so dismissing !

But his emails!

In grad school I had two profs (English lit) who had been married to each other, until he knocked up a student! They divorced & still taught at the same school like 20 yrslater. I had classes with each of them, & liked him & hated her. He used to wear eyeliner, & his eyes really “popped.”

Sleeping with a subordinate creates a hostile work environment for everyone else, because of favoritism. The fact that other people at the university knew about the affair and were pissed enough to drop a dime on him demonstrates that it was having a detrimental effect on the work environment.

Diddling each other is best left to the lower ranks. A University President must focus on important matters unrelated to his dick.

When I was getting my PhD, the married chair of my dept was allegedly having an affair with a female grad student in another, disciplinary-adjacent program at the university. They were rather public about their "friendship" and were frequently seen together on campus at all hours. She was Asian and there was also a weird yellow fever element to it. (He had a penchant for working with female students from Korea.) He gave her many professional opportunities that should have gone to his own students, or at least students in his own dept.

Eventually, enough students became disgruntled and they instigated a Title IX investigation. The only outcome was that he was ousted from his role as dept chair. But what did it matter if he was, or was not, having an actual romantic affair with the student? The favoritism was egregious either way and created a very toxic environment in the dept, especially for his own graduate students.

I have a feeling situations like these have long plagued higher education, probably all the way back to the founding of the Università di Bologna in 1088!

Yeah, it's the favoritism.

That's why I look askance at "family companies." Who wants to work in a place where half of the "employees" are spouses, brother, sisters, etc. You can't really talk freely. They're getting away with stuff that you can't get away with, etc.

[quote]Is that 900k PER YEAR? He is ridiculously overpaid.

Meanwhile, one-third of non-tenured U of M faculty members made less than $25,000 in 2019 and another third made between $25,000 and $50,000, per the American Federation of Teachers.

R52, can you post a link? I’m surprised at how low those numbers are. I’m wondering if they are including p/t adjuncts.

It's kind of like Willie Brown and Kamala Harris, huh?

Toxic situation.

Had a well paying job in a decent sized office where a new mid-level hire soon began having an affair with the boss.

Really messed things up.

He effectively began delegating to her authority over people who didn’t report to her (she’d just “drop in” on meetings and make ridiculous suggestions she expected to see carried out in his name. If someone complained to him he never backed them up, even if what she proposed was bonkers . . . because . . . thinking with his Dick)

Screwed up the office.

In time he lost his job and it messed up his marriage (she wasn’t quite bunny rabbit stewing with jealousy - but Close).

It is Not just a “consenting adults” situation.

Sounds like Donald and Ivanka!

He was fired for sending cutesy-poo little love notes to female subordinates? Seems excessive.

If sex with subordinates had been prohibited in my day, I would never have graduated from law school.

According to this, the lowest UofM salary is $20,800 (for a professor emeritus who may not even be teaching). The next lowest is $30,801 for a clinical instructor, which definitely sounds like a faculty position. Then there are dozens of lab techs and clerks in the low 30’s. No faculty.

[quote] Like someone else said, Michigan will have a hard time finding someone willing to take this job.

No they won’t. Michigan is one of the most prestigious universities in the country, it sits squarely in the very highest echelon of research institutions. Administrators will line right up to present themselves as a candidate.

If this was Kalamazoo State University, you might have a point.

At most state universities , the football coach is the position with the highest salary.

So where does a high level official in an institution like U of M find some nookie, or even tru love?

In a town like Ann Arbor, most of your eligible singles are going to work at the University.

Does someone have to quit their job if, say, they wanted to marry or even be a couple? Seems unfair.

R62 They are getting paid lots of money--they can go elsewhere to find true love. I mean, Ann Arbor is not that far from Detroit. And virtually all colleges and universities now have stated, binding clauses about romantic relationships with a subordinate being a fireable offense.

[quote][R52], can you post a link?

Sorry, picked it up from a tweet:

[quote]Ann Arbor is not that far from Detroit.

I'm sure Detroit is teeming with suitable love interests for a university president.

Thinking with dicks aside for a moment, I can't imagine going to work for a university these days. I'm a white guy with a big mouth. I wouldn't last the first week.

Actually, I realize as a white guy I'd never get hired to begin with, obviously.

Work emailssss

I have second-hand embarrassment from these emails. He’s sending all these romantic and flowery notes and she barely puts any effort in to respond, with a few grammatical errors thrown in. This guy was totally blinded by his loneliness or lust. I feel especially bad for his kids, ugh.

Yeah, that’s not reliable, R52. I know I sound like a jerk, but it’s usually a good idea to confirm any numbers that either surprise you or really prove your point.

R65: Greater Detroit has millions of people and one very large university Wayne State and a bunch of mid-sized ones like Mercy/UDetroit, plus Ypsilanti (next to Ann Arbor) has Eastern Michigan which is a large state school. Plus you have well-educated people associated with large corporations, philanthropy, etc. Also, it's not unusual for senior academics to have long distance relationships because the job opportunities often are for very specific expertise.

The relationship with the faculty member is nothing like nepotism in a family business, because the rules and laws are different. This was just one of many questionable things that this guy did. UofM is a big school with a lot of prestige---they will have no trouble finding a suitable replacement.

The article referenced at R64 was conflating universal college stats with what's going on at U of M.

[quote] Which makes me agree that this guy did something else to piss someone higher up than the scorned woman off.

This guy belonged to the wrong synagogue.

The members of the main synagogue have the numbers and want total control.

Schlissel tempted his victim with “i can lure you to visit with the promise of a knish”

He told her the secret UM motto is "She Shtups to Conquer."

R73 Gooey knish

The rumors online are that it was either his assistant/secretary who was a longstanding member of the president's office staff, or a grad student in organizational management who had been his student as an undergrad. It looks to me like it is the older assistant/secretary.

I read somewhere that it was a university museum curator r77

His exec assistant is the mistress. She's in her 40s or 50s.

Past presidents talked about how lovely and passive she was to work with, that she was well connected, apparently of British background. It sounds like she was only answering him with few details, and she probably had been familiar with the kind of closeness some university president secretaries have with their boss, traveling with them and so on.

Wouldn't it be funny if she leaked the emails?

He seems like the kind of putz who wanted to be with a woman who was subordinate and submissive, picked up his calzones for him and so on. His wife seems like she had her own life going and was never going to be that.

University president secretaries normally do outlast a number of presidents, and are well connected to donors and the local community. Her own salary was 200000. I wonder if it got to the point where they had to get rid of him, and she helped it along.

[quote] He seems like the kind of putz

And he's no Adonis either.

liverpool. the way these ex presidents do go on about their assistants.

[quote] Actually, I realize as a white guy I'd never get hired to begin with, obviously.

Maybe you can find a job, elsewhere, though.

[quote] I realize as a white guy I'd never get hired to begin with, obviously

You belong to the wrong synagogue.

I think it's romantic.

R40, look up the Dr. Robert Anderson scandal at U of M.

R79, the girlfriend is 54.

R20, Crazy eyes anyone?

He really did screw up a number of sex scandals at UM, let alone his own. He had to go.

Gross!

Now, it sounds like it might have been a grad student?

Found this BITCHY datalounge esq thread..

I think the concensus is that the emails were about situations the president's assistant/secretary had to be at - grad students normally don't sit with big donors at games, for example.

I love how some commenters have turned into pearl clutching Little Miss Prissypants. A married man having an affair with a co-worker! Why bless ma soul, thats just plain sinful! Banish him from polite society forevah! If he was being sucked off by a hot grad student you'd be cheering him on and asking for photos.

Not the issue, r95.

See eg r50

I'll be disappointed if those emails are confusing "Individual 1" and one of the PII notes! (I think the president's assistant is individual 1 and one of the PII is the grad student, but we'll see)

University presidents can be very stupid. They are there to entertain donors, and the more of an ignorant drunken playboy they are, the more fun the donors have.

Does the subordinate lose their job too ?

Well this is the wife though.. just saying.

Nobody in this story is attractive, including the possible grad student. It's a strange mix.

The wife won't divorce him. I'll put money on it. She won't want to be single at her age. Unless he's leaving her for his mistress, they'll reconcile, he'll be in the doghouse for a while, but eventually it'll be back to (placid) normal.

I love your cuntiness, r101!

R100 Did Grant Wood take that picture?

R34, why not reveal the emails?

They are public record. The guy was at a state school and he knew the deal before he wrote them.

R104

Bless you, I got it.

Who is the grad student r101?

r100 - that photo. Hair, make-up, glasses, dress - does that woman get any fashion detail right?

The policy he broke is one that was put in last year after a series of sexual harassment scandals (which he handled badly). At the time, Schlissel made a big deal about how important this new policy was, saying nobody was above the law, and so on—then he's found to violate it, and in an entirely pathetic, meme-worthy way.

This at least is the narrative I'm hearing from friends who work at U of M.

These rich people are divorced from the ordinary, unpleasant things of life in their self-obsessed, well-appointed ivory towers.

R108 She's a Princeton grad, UVA law, and works in the San Francisco office of a big-name law firm. She should know how to dress. It looks like she purposefully dresses like a Midwestern farm wife when she visits Michigan in order to fit in.

[quote] “There can be no question that you were acutely aware that any inappropriate conduct or communication between you and a subordinate would cause substantial harm to the dignity and reputation of the University of Michigan,” the letter said.

Nobody would even know about this consensual affair if you didn’t publicize it so you’re the one causing harm to the reputation of the university. Streisand Effect.

[quote]The investigation found that Dr. Schlissel had sent dozens of emails to the employee from his university account over several years. The board posted 118 pages of those messages on the university website in the interest, it said, of full disclosure.

So not only do you bring the affair to the world’s attention, you publish 118 pages of private emails? You’re the one making the university a laughing stock.

R111, the wife lives in SF? Why doesn’t she live in Michigan with her husband?

This Schlissel has the sex-appeal of a Polish pizzle.

Are you really not supposed to sleep around in the workplace? Grey’s Anatomy has all the doctors sleeping with each other all the time, bosses with interns, managers with subordinates, chief of residents with residents.

I notice (from conversations at work) people around 30 and under almost seem mentally 'trained' that workplace relationships are wrong, and they make a lot about power differences. Maybe 30-40 do sometimes too, more of a "some do, some don't" - but over that age, not as many seem bothered by it. It's a cultural shift. Workplace relationships were certainly once very common (unless it was against policy) and a lot of people today are married to people they worked with - and obviously they were not always on equal rungs of the ladder.

Why are workplace relationships bad? Most of the people I know got married to someone they met at work.

Day in and day out trapped in a confined space with someone with the added stress of work really produces a lot of relationships. With working from home now the norm, a lot of workplace romances won’t ever happen and a lot of marriages won’t ever be. Sad!

"Public record" means something like filed court documents.

I'm not saying that the .edu emails were private, but they're not "public record."

I though it was Matthew Perry

It's kind of sad how despite all the gains gays have made over the past 20 years, pussy continues to have a higher fatility rate for men in high-level positions. It's been a long while since someone was busted having an affair with a male employee.

[quote]I thought it was Matthew Perry

Matthew Perry with Jennifer Aniston.

Comments from the board at R93.

“So any love between Rochester and Jane Eyre must be prohibited because of Jane's subordination status? If we view any person in such position a full independent being, can we let her make that decision herself? If it's love, it's love. If you find it offensive, you are not considering everyone equal.”

“These rules are horrible. Many people meet their future husbands at work. If a woman wants to date a man who is established and making money why should she be restricted?“

“Can we stop acting like this was some babe in the woods? She was a long-time employee, his age, and made $200,000 a year plus lavish fringe benefits and pension.”

Why is it men like Schlissel and r50 and John Darnell at Yale (Google that scandal) can't be discreet and keep their indiscretions quiet? Why do they have to flaunt them? It's usually the flaunting that gets them into trouble.

Schlissel didn't flaunt this.

Posters are still not getting that this was just the latest thing in a series of controversies that had the Regents—ultimately a majority of them—exasperated with Schlissel and looking for a way to dump him. It's not just the adultery-over-official-email, although that was the violation (of a policy he'd trumpeted his support for when it was introduced) that was a step too far.

R108 Click to see the full image, it’s even worse. She looks like a Midwest granny on her way to a church potluck.

They're both unfortunate looking.

I guess it's true that water seeks its own level

You expect a guy making $1 million/year to look the part.

How many hookers could he have hired for $1 million and still kept his job?

That pussy cost him MILLIONS. He's got to be kicking himself now.

Any pictures of the mistress?

He didn't want a hooker, he wanted the girlfriend experience.

He was in LURVE!

R118

"Public record" is how the email are described by the University.

"Email messages are considered public records under the FOIA if they deal with university business or are maintained by the university related to university business."

Generally, messages that misuse a company's resources (including the email system itself) are considered to deal with business (even though the topics are personal).

And on top of the point R132 makes, the president of the University of Michigan is a state employee.